The shape of learning

It has been a long time since I posted anything in this space about my children's education.  I have half a post written about something else but I don't have the headspace to complete that this week, it requires thinking!  My head is a bit full at the moment.

Before I go any further I want to say that I am not against schools, my choice to home educate my children was based on their individual needs, I did not think that they would learn as they could do in a school setting.  We made the initial decision back in 2008 for Cameron and again for Alice in 2012, I am now in my thirteenth year of home educating.  

Cameron chose to continue his learning at a local college* which he started in September 2021.  This has been a huge period of adjustment for Alice and I as we get used to it only being the two of us at home.  This has followed a two year period of our lives which, like those of so many, was turned upside down and inside out by the arrival of Covid on our shores.  So many people said to me in those early days that it would not be any different for us, having to do learning at home, it was very very different and really really hard as it was for us all.  What I did not have to do was to get my children to do work that had been decided upon and organised by someone else.

Education in schools is usually based on a curriculum that has been decided on by either the school themselves or, more usually these days, by local or national government, depending on where you live.  A curriculum that covers subjects and areas of those subjects that it has been decided that children should be taught.  Who is to say that that is what children should be taught to give them a rounded education? Do they even need to be taught?  Where I live I do not have to follow the curriculum that has been decided on by my government, I could choose to teach them, but I don't.  My children choose what they want to learn and I facilitate that learning with them in ways that suit their way of learning.  

That does not mean that they spend their whole day online, gaming or watching videos of people gaming, far from it.  Today as an example, Alice started her day making her own breakfast, this was followed by piano and guitar practice and gymnastics exercises, we then went out to a new gymnastics class that a mum has set up for home educated children.  It was the first one for people to try it out, Alice loved it, it will be her second gymnastics session in the week as she also goes to one on Saturday too, she wants to do both for a bit to see how it goes.  When we got home we made dinner (lunch) together, ate it whilst playing a homemade bingo game to help her improve her multiplication skills and then cleared up together.  After dinner we reviewed the science experiments we did yesterday morning, sang a song together and I read another chapter from a book of Greek Myths to her.  I also read a chapter from our dinner time chapter book that I read every week day.

Our days flow the way they need to, depending on what we are doing.  I had talked to Alice before she decided to try the new gymnastics class as it would have an impact on how we usually do things.  It is usual for us to spend the morning at home when we have time that is focused on our main topic, at the moment this is Science, we do some maths most days, sing songs, I read to her, recite poetry, whatever Alice wants us to do together.  This is our together time, learning that is facilitated by me but always driven by Alice asking for me to do this with her.   If we go out we prefer this to be in the afternoons.

I have built up a huge range of resources over the years, we had a very structured way of doing things for a few years when they were younger.  It was requested by them so I provided it.  Alice is now doing much of what I did with Cameron at that time, adapted to suit how she learns and where she is at with her reading and writing skills.

I know when our own experience of learning has involved sitting in a classroom with a group of children being taught it is hard to imagine any other way of doing this.  I mentioned earlier that Covid had a big impact on us, before the restrictions it placed on all our lives we were out every day of the week at a group or class somewhere. We had an art class, followed by a forest school/singing group on Mondays, Piano lesson followed by a drama session at a local museum on Tuesdays, Wednesday we went to a French class in the afternoons, Thursday I ran a craft group once a month in my house, on the weeks we were not doing that we met with friends for a walk or a play, Fridays we had a day in the local town doing the weekly shop and meeting with friends in the library and then go swimming together at the town pool, Saturdays Alice had a gymnastics class in our local town.  We also met with friends to go mountain biking, for walks and storytelling workshops, we did Conservation work with local charities and were working towards two Awards one in the Arts and one based on the Environment.  In the evenings there was volunteering at Beavers for Cameron on Mondays, Scouts for Alice on Tuesdays, Archery for Cameron on Wednesdays or on Fridays once a month when he had Explorer Scouts.  It was busy but that was our life, it all stopped mid March 2020 and very little of this re-started during the two years since.  So being at home all day every day was very much not the shape of our learning or the life that we were used to.

I found ways to make things still happen when we could not meet up face to face, our beloved French class which we had been going to for five years when it stopped did move to being online.  A chance meeting with the Mum of a child who used to be in Alice's gymnastics class, who I knew taught French but had not bumped into for a long time even allowing for lockdowns, led to a new teacher and a class that we could do from home.  Lovely as our original class was it involved a lot of driving and took up most of an afternoon for a one hour class.  We are still doing that from home and Cameron can continue to learn French as we were able to fit this in around his college timetable.  

Two of the families who came to the craft group I ran moved from the area, so it was never going to be able to start up again in that format.  During lockdown we bought together a group online where we all created things together in our own homes, sometimes this was us all doing the same thing, sometimes it was based around a theme depending on what resources we all had to hand.   We have now started doing crafts with a family we meet up with once a week.  It is lovely to sit together and create, we are working on an embroidery project at the moment, we have made Christmas decorations, wee peg dolls and window stars.  In the summer months last year we met this same family for outdoor swimming in local rivers and lakes, I very much hope we can do that again this year when the weather warms up.

I feel very blessed to have been able to support my children's learning and education in the way that we have for the past twelve plus years.  I know that it is a privilege to be able to make that choice, it reduced our income considerably as I gave up work.  I started a very part time job two years ago and have added to my hours recently, as Alice gets older I will probably take on more hours of paid work.  We are not big spenders but I would gladly have gone without if we had had to, home education has enabled my children to learn what they want at their own pace.  This has been so important for Alice learning to read , although I cannot make the comparison with how she this would have been for her in a school setting I feel sure it would not have been as positive an experience for her.

You can find more posts here about the shape that learning has taken in our house over the years.

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* college in the UK is a place you would usually attend from the age of around 16 or older,  the courses are up to but not including degree level study, university is where you would go to study at degree level and higher.